Vacancy
by ikvros
Summary: It's a little funny when rich people are uncomfortable — she can admit that. Even so, her friends have been largely welcoming of all aspects of what Obi has dubbed 'The Gang's Grand Adventure: Budget Road Trip Extraordinaire'.


"Well...it's not...what I expected," Zen says flatly.

Shirayuki squints as she blinks up at the orange, flickering neon of the sign that reads 'MOE', burnt out letters like blackened teeth against the night. She's not sure it's what any of them expected, really, except Obi. He looks pleased with himself as he slides his hands into his pockets, cheshire grin so wide it sparkles.

"It's the closest inn to our next destination," he offers, before pulling out his phone, waving it for emphasis. "I checked."

The air is warm and sticky with the promise of rain, already condensating against Shirayuki's skin. She wipes her fingers over her damp cheek as she peers around Zen, down the row of red doors lining the graying brick. Some of them are missing their numbers, only indicated by the missing paint where they were once attached.

"Why did we put Obi in charge of lodging, again?" Mitsuhide asks lowly, bringing a hand to his temples. Kiki snorts.

"Weren't you the one that suggested it?" There's a teasing lilt in her voice, and Mitsuhide glares tiredly at her through his fingers. "Something like 'Obi's the most well-traveled, so he should take over navigation', wasn't it?"

"Forgive me, _Majesties_ ," Obi says, one gloved hand on his chest, bowing ceremoniously. "Next time, I shall seek out the hidden Marriott in the middle of nowhere."

"Would have settled for a Comfort Inn," Mitsuhide grumbles.

Shirayuki feels Zen's gaze on her, and she looks up at him, her heart stuttering when she notes the way the humidity has limpened his hair enough for it to flop over one eye. It's so pale that it glows in the neon that they stand under, and she fights the urge to reach up and brush it back from his face.

The eye she can see is...curious. He's gauging her reaction in the same endearing way he has the entirety of the trip, looking to her for the right answer. It's funny, and a little strange, because Zen's been to places Shirayuki has only daydreamed about, more times than she could ever imagine. There are thousands and thousands of miles of ocean under his belt, rolling landscapes and sprawling cities viewed through the plexiglass of the company jet, from the balconies of five star hotel suites. She supposes that _Zen_ is technically the most well-traveled, but he doesn't know a thing about road trips.

Shirayuki's not an expert, either; most of her travel memories are from her childhood, when her grandparents would drive down to the coast every summer. But she remembers the cramping ache in her legs vividly, feels it now, as she shifts her weight onto the balls of her feet. She's stayed in cheap motels before, though this one seems particularly run down. Still, it's...charming, in its own foreign way, not pretending to be more than what it is. She imagines the sign, buzzing night after night, shining down on the faces of disappointed tourists who are too exhausted to drive another mile.

"It's not so bad, you guys," Shirayuki says, and Obi beams at her. "You haven't been on a road trip until you've stayed at a _really_ crappy motel."

"It's all part of the experience," Obi agrees, and the camaraderie is palpable as they grin at each other. It's a little funny when rich people are uncomfortable — she can admit that. Even so, her friends have been largely welcoming of all aspects of what Obi has dubbed 'The Gang's Grand Adventure: Budget Road Trip Extraordinaire' — from taking turns driving Obi's old van, to mainlining gas station coffee, to the _two_ times they've had to be towed _so far_.

Kiki seems especially acclimated to slumming it, her normally glossy hair thrown up in a three-day old bun that somehow suits her. Shirayuki can't recall a single complaint from her, which is more than she can say for even herself. But complaining and grumbling about how god-awful it is being on the road is _also_ part of the experience, she thinks, and besides — when they get to where they're going, everything but each other's company melts away. There's a camera hanging around her neck, nestled against the folds of Zen's oversized uni hoodie that he'd placed over her like a blanket during her nap earlier, a full roll of film she'll have to change out tonight.

Shirayuki is the designated voice of reason, so Mitsuhide sucks it up, and Zen smiles down at her softly, and they all make their way into the unsettling dimness of the lobby.

* * *

The chipped crystal knob spins round and round and round, to no avail, and Shirayuki lets out a short noise of defeat, slumping against the yellowed ceramic of the tub.

"So much for showering," she sighs, and Kiki laughs from the door frame of the small bathroom.

"At least we're visiting a spring tomorrow," she reminds her, reaching up to touch her hair. Shirayuki's own is pulled back in a french braid, concealing just how oily it really is. "Besides, the boys are a lot grosser than we are right now, anyway. They don't even bother washing up in bathroom sinks when we stop."

Shirayuki gets up, a little relieved not to _have_ to endure any time in what is possibly the sketchiest shower she's ever seen.

"I guess we don't have it as bad as the boys," she giggles softly. "What do you want to bet they're still arguing about who has to share a bed?" She flicks the bathroom light off, and her and Kiki turn toward a room that is somehow a snapshot of a decade neither of them were alive to see, with vomit-colored shag carpet, browns and oranges mingling between the furniture and the false wood paneling. There's a prominent, but not _entirely_ overbearing must in the room comprised of mildew and ancient cigarette smoke, and Shirayuki scrunches her nose.

"I'd bet my life on it," Kiki deadpans, and in the following silence, they can hear the voices of three frustrated men through the thin wall.

"Good bet," Shirayuki breathes. Everyone's a little on edge from the day's long drive, and both Zen and Mitsuhide were taken aback at the motel's lack of three-person rooms. Getting another room for a single person didn't fit in with the theme of 'Budget Road Trip Extraordinaire', so that was scrapped as soon as it left Mitsuhide's lips in the lobby. "Do you think we should intervene?"

"I'll tell them to shut up." Kiki makes herself comfortable on one of the double beds before she pulls out her phone, sprawling her long, pale legs in front of her, toes stretching as she types what Shirayuki can only assume is a concise group text. Thirty seconds after she presses send, the unintelligible bickering quiets.

Shirayuki's own phone buzzes from the night table, and she reaches for it, giggling when she discovers that the first words of Kiki's text, are in fact "shut up". She suggests that Zen and Obi should share a bed, because they're shorter and more slight than Mitsuhide, which Obi takes offense at. There's an influx of emojis from all parties, some light-hearted insults flung, and Shirayuki smiles when she hears bellowing laughter from the other side of the wall. That's more like it.

When the lights finally go out, Shirayuki's body thrums with restlessness. She spends two hours staring up at the popcorn ceiling in the dark, listening to the gentle patter of rain outside, to the snoring on the other side of the wall, to Kiki's slow and steady breathing as she sleeps. The thought crosses her mind that maybe Kiki is better at road-tripping than she is. She clicks the lock button on her phone periodically, squinting at the bright numbers of the digital clock as the hour creeps towards sunrise. She tosses and she turns, and every time she closes her eyes, her thoughts drift to Zen and the way he linked his pinky with hers while he was driving, so easy, so simple. She opens them and she sees his hair glowing under that damned sign that will probably say 'MOE' forever, sees it blowing wildly in the sun and the wind whenever he rolls the van windows down — which is frequently.

She closes her eyes again and squeezes them tightly, pulling the blanket over her head. She hates the way it smells, and it's no use, anyway.

Shirayuki texts him quickly, before she can change her mind.

 _are you awake?_

It's like she's fourteen again. Her stomach flutters in the seconds after she sends it, heat prickling up her neck for reasons that are unexplainable, frustrating in their influence on her heart rate. For God's sake, they're a year out from their college graduation, and they're both adults, and she shouldn't be this worked up over something so small but she _is,_ clutching her phone to her chest with the same hopeful anxiousness she recalls from some fuzzy place in the past.

It startles her when it buzzes minutes later, and she fumbles with her passcode, entering it incorrectly _four_ times before pausing and taking a deep breath. Fifth time's the charm.

 _ **Come outside?**_

Her chest swells, and she's suddenly out of bed, yanking her leggings from earlier over her calves and then her hips, stumbling for her shoes in the renewed darkness as her pupils attempt to dilate. Kiki stirs, and Shirayuki freezes, hoping she hasn't woken her. Kiki's never been intrusive or teased her about her closeness with Zen, but something inside her wants to keep quiet, wants to exist in this moment alone with him. Kiki's breathing evens out, and Shirayuki lets herself exhale, pushing her sock-clad feet into her high tops before she slips soundlessly out the door.

The air is cool now, and it smells like damp earth, fresh against her skin and in her lungs. The overhanging walkway of the motel's second story acts as an umbrella, water falling in steady streams just feet in front of her. Pools have gathered in the surrounding potholes of the parking lot, and reflections of the neon sign shimmer and dance in their constant rippling, catching her attention as she warms her fingers in the front pocket of her hoodie. Zen's hoodie.

"I didn't expect you to be awake."

Shirayuki turns towards that voice, so soft, gentle as the rain that falls now. Zen sits against his door, legs crossed loosely in front of him. His hair is russed from laying in bed, and his smile is sleepy, eyes lidded. Her heart flutters as she moves to sit next to him, pulling her knees to her chest, nuzzling her face into them. She's so close that she can feel the heat emanating from Zen's shoulder, almost touching — but not quite.

"You couldn't fall asleep either?" She peeks at him, murmuring into the fabric of her leggings.

"Obi steals the blanket," Zen grumbles, his head tilting back against the door. "And Mitsuhide snores. Loudly."

"I guess it's a good thing Kiki sleeps like a rock, then," she laughs. "I could hear him through the wall."

"They were definitely made for each other," Zen agrees, and then his shoulder is pressing against hers, and she hopes he can't hear the way her breath catches. He's warm, and the pressure is light but it's all she can feel, all she can focus on. "But in truth, Shirayuki, I couldn't sleep because...I missed you."

It sounds funny, because they've spent every day together for the past week. But she understands what he means — they haven't had more than a minute to themselves, haven't exchanged more than lingering glances, a brush of fingers, the hook of pinkies. His honesty makes her head spin. She doesn't understand how he says things like that so easily, how the words sound so natural with his voice around them. It frightens her to be so forward; she's never been great at saying what she means. But she lets her hand fall from its clasp on her leg to the concrete between them, the way he slips his fingers through hers without hesitation gives her courage.

"I missed you, too," she breathes. She squeezes his hand, daring to look at his face again, fixating on the way his eyes glimmer even in the darkness. "Zen, I'm...so glad you're here. That you agreed to go on this trip, even though it's —"

"Perfect," he interrupts, leaning into her. "I've never had more fun in my life than I have these past few days."

She's a little taken aback, and it must show, because Zen laughs, his shoulder shaking against hers.

"What is it?" He asks, smiling down at her. He looks like he knows what she's going to say, and it makes her feel a little embarrassed. His world has been different from his birth, and she can't imagine anyone that has grown up in luxury and has the ability to travel comfortably would enjoy all of the tribulations of this road trip. In fact, she's watched him struggle not to carelessly spend money, to solve their problems quickly with it, to use it as an extension of his inherent kindness.

"I guess I'm just wondering why you're so dedicated to...to…"

"The 'budget' part of Budget Road Trip Extraordinaire?" His voice is teasing, and Shirayuki flushes, and it makes him laugh again. "You don't have to tiptoe around it. I know it must seem strange. Or like I'm pretending to be someone who struggles for the sake of experiment — I apologize if I come off that way."

"It's not that," Shirayuki says, but she can't find the words, can't ask the right question. They both look away from each other, and there's only the rain for a moment. She kicks herself silently. She could have waited to bring that up, could have just shut up and enjoyed his warmth and his hand and the cocoon of the late hour. But there's no going back now. "I know that Obi set the stipulations, but I don't think he expected any of you to go along with it as well as you have."

Zen looks down at their entwined hands, brushing his thumb over her finger. A moment later he speaks.

"I don't ever want to be so comfortable with my wealth that it becomes my identity." His voice is quiet, but incredibly earnest. "I know it's all that some people see when they look at me, or hear my name. That it makes some people dislike me, or drives them to take advantage of me. That will always be a part of my life. And I've accepted it, because I have the most incredible, trustworthy people by my side. Including you. Especially you, Shirayuki."

The way he says her name sends her heart galloping again.

"I have childhood friends that don't know how to drive," he continues. "I've met CEOs twice my age that have never learned, because they've never needed to. And I guess...that's okay, if they're content with that. But Izana — my brother, you know," and Shirayuki nods. "He made me learn the minute I turned sixteen. Gave me the car and said he'd let my driver go. I actually had to take public transport until I got my license because he was convinced it would inspire me to take my lessons more seriously."

Shirayuki snorts. "I'm sure it did. Some of the things I've seen on the train have scarred me for life."

"I had no idea what I was doing at first, and I was late all the time because I kept missing the correct stops. I was tempted to call a car a couple of times, but Izana watched the bank statements like a hawk while all of that was going on. I couldn't understand, at the time, why he was so adamant about it, but I do now. It was small, but taking the train was the beginning of this...shift in perspective. It started this chain reaction in my day to day life — completely changed how I saw people. How I saw myself among them. Knocked the self-importance right out of me.

"I am incredibly fortunate. I'll never pretend that wealth is some kind of burden. But it can make people ugly. It can rob you of your compassion, your ability to empathize, to see beauty in things that matter. And I just don't ever want...to be blind."

Zen shifts, and suddenly he's looking up at her, and his cheeks are red and she's never seen his eyes so dark, so passionate. She's frozen when he reaches up to touch her face, leaning so close to her that their foreheads touch. She can't breathe, can't think.

"Because sharing a bed with Obi is the absolute worst, and so is waiting for a tow truck, and so is not showering for three straight days, but —"

Shirayuki giggles, and it's breathless, and it makes Zen laugh, too.

"But what?"

"That," he says. "That laugh, and the way you curl up into a ball when you sleep in a car seat, and the way you looked standing under that neon motel sign — those are the most spectacularly beautiful things I've witnessed."

Her first thought is that that's impossible, because there is far more beauty in the places they've visited on this trip than her illuminated grossness, but her second thought is that she's never wanted to be kissed more in her life — and that's the one that sticks, as he caresses the underside of her jaw. She tilts her face, so close now that their lips brush, makes Zen inhale sharply.

"The sign says MOE," she whispers, and that's all, because Zen closes the distance, his fingers slipping to the nape of her neck, where they spark fire.

His mouth is warm and soft and languid, moving slowly with her own, and suddenly everything that isn't a part of him vanishes from the detection of her senses. Her knees meet the ground as she leans into him, and the hand that isn't squeezing his flattens softly against his chest, where his heart beats wildly beneath the fabric. It makes her press closer, enraptured by the realization that he has been just as nervous, just as affected by their proximity as she is.

Pulling away proves to be more difficult than she imagined, because they chase each other's lips with soft pecks and barely-there brushes, and his fingers stroke the back of her neck, and her own bunch the front of his shirt into her palm. She wills herself to remember that they're out in the open, that the rain has stopped falling, that sunrise is imminent — that they're not _actually_ the only two people in the world, despite how it feels.

Their foreheads press together again, and there's a smile on Shirayuki's lips big enough to rival the encroaching dawn.

"This trip wouldn't be the same without you," she says, before pulling back, just enough to meet his eyes. She thinks of him in the van again, rolling the glass down despite the heat and desert sand, leaning out the window. She thinks of him and Obi barreling off the lakeside cliff from day three, sending Mitsuhide into a panic for the twenty seconds it took for them to hit the water and pop back up. She sees him now, so vulnerable and open and _hers_ , and her heart is filling up the entire cavity of her chest. "Your passion — your love for life, for others, for...gas station cheese danishes —"

"They're _good_ ," he chides, and she giggles again.

"You inspire me," she continues. "You make me want to soak it in, appreciate every moment — even the mundane ones. You make the world around me brighter."

His eyes sparkle, and his hand leaves hers, just a second before he pulls her into his arms. She situates herself there, turning between his legs, pressing her back against his chest. He's warm and comfortable, like a pillow, and Shirayuki finally realizes that she's exhausted. The sky is an electric blue, breaking up the rain clouds, magenta seeping into the horizon. She wants to take a picture.

"You're still wearing my hoodie," Zen murmurs, some time later, when she's about to doze off. Her eyes flutter open, but she's too tired to be sheepish.

"It's warm and it smells like you," she yawns, snuggling into him. "Shhh. I'm sleeping."

"You can't sleep out here," he says, but the response is delayed, barely coherent. "The others…will say…"

* * *

"You two are _so_ strange."

Kiki's up before anyone else, and she stares down at her friends, sound asleep against each other on the concrete below. She'd been alarmed to see Shirayuki's bed empty, had thrown open the door in a panic, prepared to check the boys' room. She'd had to clamp a hand over her mouth when she spotted them, but she steeled herself.

Almost immediately, a wicked idea had her creeping back into the room, pulling open the flap of Shirayuki's bag.

Her voice makes them stir, but it's the camera shutter that wakes Zen with a start, his eyes wide in the seconds it takes for him to process where he's at and what has transpired. He shakes Shirayuki awake, and they lurch apart, scrambling to their feet as Kiki regards them with quiet amusement.

"Kiki, you didn't," Zen starts, his cheeks reddening as his eyes fixate on the camera.

"I think she did," Shirayuki breathes, wondering how it's possible to feel like she's been caught sneaking out by a parent.

"Memories," Kiki deadpans, waving the camera for emphasis. The lens glints in the morning sunlight.


End file.
